Floor maintenance activities generally include cleaning, applying a new finish, and buffing and polishing the newly applied finish. Generally, a more abrasive cleaning element will be used to clean the floor of dirt, scuff marks and to remove any old finishes, and less abrasive cleaning elements will be used to apply, buff, and polish the new finish.
To perform these cleaning activities, persons skilled in the art have relied upon a graduated system of cleaning pads. These pads range in degree of abrasiveness, and are used with floor cleaning machines that rotate the pads while urging the pad against the floor. Properly used, such pads serve well to carry out the various cleaning activities outlined above.
Unfortunately, such pads are inconvenient in many respects and are also relatively costly. In particular, each pad must be properly centered on the floor cleaning machine or the pad may bunch up, tear or become damaged in some other way. Since the pad must be reversed and exchanged quite often during a typical cleaning operation, continually ensuring proper orientation of the pad can be time consuming. Pads are also ill-suited for use on floors having low obstacles such as phone line conduit and the like over which the cleaning implement should pass. If not carefully moved over such an obstacle, the pad may tear, bunch up or become uncentered.
More importantly, scrubbing and buffing pads quickly lose their abrasive qualities. During each use, the pad will lose many small embedded particles that impart the abrasive character, and therefore cause the pad to become less suitable for its original intended purpose. Furthermore, the abrasive particles lost by the pad create a maintenance problem, and the operator must generally dust mop a pad scrubbed area to remove such particles.
Finally, pads become dirty and clog quickly, and the operator must utilize time-consuming cleaning techniques to prepare the pads for use again. This usually requires both washing machines and drying racks or the like.
In part because of the problems identified above, persons skilled in the art have also used brushes that are similarly usable with floor cleaning machines. Some brushes in the prior art have a brush face comprised of bristles alone, and some provide for a combination of both bristles and cleaning pads or the like, such as those depicted in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,290,713 and 3,181,193.
Unfortunately, these prior art brushes are generally only useful for scrubbing. Although some attempts have been made to provide a brush useful for buffing activities, these attempts have failed to provide a brush capable of buffing in a manner comparable to a new pad buffing, and the industry has continued to predominantly rely upon the pad system of floor maintenance for spray buffing and light scrubbing.
A need therefore exists for a cleaning device that will scrub and buff a floor in a manner comparable to the performance of a buffing pad, but that substantially avoids the relative inconveniences and costliness of pads.